Sunday, February 28, 2016

Conspiracy theorising Lamar Smith can't hack change

I see that Lamar Smith hasn't been able to find any evidence for his conspiracy theory yet, so he's asked NOAA for more emails. He complained that he "only" got 301 pages of emails. He figured the search terms were "unnecessarily narrow". If you want to get a feel for Lamar's conspiracy theory that climate change is a Presidential hoax, he now wants NOAA to send him all emails containing any of the following words:

Karl

buoy

ship

Night Marine Air Temperature

temperature

climate

change

Paris

U.N.

United Nations

clean power plan

regulations

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

President

Obama

White House

Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)

He gave them seven whole days. In his next request, he'll no doubt separate words white from house, united from nations, clean from power and plan, Council from quality, and maybe boy as well as buoy, etc. He might also widen temperature to temp, which would allow him to get any emails relating to temporary whatever.

I sincerely hope that he gets sent all emails that include stuff like:

"there's been a change to my mobile phone number"

"can you change the staff meeting to 2:00 pm"

"Lamar Smith is spelt with an "i" not a "y". Change all versions of "Smyth" to "Smith""

"please ship the staplers to our Seattle office"

If he does, then he'll probably spend years trying to work out the coded messages in the above.

This could go on forever. Will Lamar Smith call for NOAA's budget to be expanded to cover the cost of his private army of email searchers? As Gavin Schmidt tweeted:

Rep. Smith also cites a letter to sent him by “325 scientists, engineers, economists, and other scholars raising serious inquiries about the adherence of NOAA to [Office of Management and Budget] guidelines established under the Data Quality Act.”

Regarding this, the copy of the signatory list posted at WUWT contains the names of 302 signatories, most of whom are retired. There is a grand total of two climate scientists on it (MIT emeritus professor Richard Lindzen and U. of Alabama in Huntsville researcher Roy Spencer), both well known in global warming denial circles.

Interestingly, 82 of the signatories who expressed concern that “NOAA has failed to observe the OMB [Office of Management and Budget] (and its own) guidelines, established in relation to the Data Quality Act” are non-Americans living or working outside the U.S. Funny that they would worry about the OMB.

The petition signatories include 58 of the ~300 who signed an April 2010 petition to the American Physical Society Council opposing its position statement on climate change. It seems someone broke out the emeritus email list.

John: I thought I had caught all those, but that wasn't the case. (Others: the list is inconsistently formatted and not quite alphabetical.)

After careful review of my spreadsheet (converted from the list pdf), the revised total is 310 names, 61 who also signed the APS petition, and at least 92 non-Americans living outside the U.S. This now brings my count very close to yours.

Though not a scientific paper, this is a good example in miniature of of peer review, fact-checking, revision and convergence to a more correct analysis of data.

Millicent: I suspect the mortality rate is now running at least 5% per year, and the natural replacement rate close to 0%. It would be mildly interesting (though not interesting enough to devote the time to the task) to determine how many of the non-repeats from the APS 2009-2010 petition might be explained by infirmity or death.

VV:yes, but the ~3000 scientists are actually real scientists.The ~300 scoured Heartland, every denialists group in AU and Europe, and Houston for signatures ... and some are quite amazing.I'm doing a detailed analysis to figure out the new ones.

When in doubt, blame Obama. That's Douthat for you. The comment section is a hoot, try reader's picks. Hint: when citing links, but them off after html. Everything after "?" is tracking stuff about where you found it. Like this:http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/opinion/sunday/from-obama-to-trump.html

Aww, that list of words is so cute, I'm glad I'm not on computer trying to compose a message that would include most of them and implicate a conspiracy of another kind. Antero might be related to Jorma.

The guy next to me says this is a secure line. They're rerouting this via noaa radars mail system here in Turkish Cyprus, so even if some whitehat tries to track this it'll look like someone in the radar room has lost his marbles. Please delete this email-account after reading this.

As you might know I was relocated to monitor some of the republican ops overseas within the agency right when the nigger, who some now call President Obama, had seized the White House. Our "clean power plan" is progressing, we just have to ship one more arms load to our friends in Syria. You do not need to know who they are. They've come up with an ingenious plan to disrupt the United Nations (U.N.) negotiations in Paris but need a small amount of bloodmoney for the fighters who are not likely to stay alive. As you well know, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ....

...

Regards to mrs SmythBest, Karl"

well, it would get rather nasty in between involving human trafficking, former Serbian military and such, so I'm not going to write it out.

There are some vague connections in this set of emails to San Bernardino shooting, couple of accidental deaths of Antarctic researchers, arms smuggling through Europe to Paris by selected Serbians posing as refugees and the Benghazi incident, as "you gotta make some sacrifices to fighr the evil ipcc".

Oh dear, i really should stop this, guess I'm also in that spy list you know of.

As a patriotic American, I am concerned that Lamar Smith isn't digging deep enough into this matter. Lamar's latest list of search terms just won't cut it; if he doesn't up his game, those nefarious NOAA scientists will simply slither away without being held accountable.

So I decided to assisit Lamar by tweeting him these additional search terms (https://twitter.com/caerbannog666/status/703932886940983296)

Of course, there's no way to compose a complete list (given twitter's 140-character limit). So maybe others here could chime in. Folks who have twitter accounts can help @LamarSmithTx21 out by tweeting him additional right-wing nutcase search terms. Maybe use the hashtag #HelpLamarGetNOAA

Lamar Smith is going to go down in history along with James Inhofe as one of the stupidest political hacks ever (s)Elected into office. He obviously has no idea what he's doing and how silly this witch hunt of his really is. He needs to be removed from office asap.

More Lamar anti-science, all too plausible, too. Supposedly the New York Times is Librul, but you couldn't figure it from its content. It doesn't properly report things like this, using "balance" to promote establishment views more often than not. They are, after all, a financial organization with advertisers.http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/opinion/science-in-the-national-interest.html

Slightly off topic, but since you brought up the NYT, from yesterday's edition, here's some pie in the sky (or smoke and mirrors) offered by the current head of CSIRO to justify cutting climate research:

Dr. Marshall, who was chosen to bring commercial expertise to the agency and strengthen links between industry and research, has said he will focus on programs aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change. In his email to the staff, he said he had “high hopes we can transmute commodity mineral sands into unique titanium ink for 3-D printing to create a new multibillion dollar industry or coal into a cleaner form of diesel fuel to reinvigorate a $43 billion industry.”

Larry Marshall's plan is to shoot the mesenger and to try to drape the enemy in pretty patriotic colours.

It would be fine if it was just his own tech start-up that he was putting on the line, but it's not: he's in fact in treasonous league with the enemy via his evisceration of climate research in Australia. All that Marshall's plan is, when all is said and done, is a plan to sabotage his own side's radar and other early warming systems, and to sell arms to the enemy - but with pretty flowers first painted on the projectiles and bombs.

If you start from what Lamar Smith knows, namely that global warming is a hoax, then the fact that his first email request didn't turn up any evidence of a conspiracy is simply more proof of a conspiracy. I don't see why we should expect this lack of email evidence to convince him that there isn't a conspiracy if Arctic ice melting, flowers blooming earlier in the spring, warblers migrating earlier in the spring, etc. can't convince him that the world is warming.

It doesn't seem to have crossed his mind that search terms like temperature, change, and climate would collect almost all my and my colleagues emails written while we worked on this paper - whether they were about the paper or not. Also the idea that Obama or the United Nations would turn up in scientists' emails clearly shows that he doesn't understand the work scientists do.

`There is clearly a second (secret) internet that was developed by the IPCC and is used solely by the tens of thousands of scientists in all fields who are in on the conspiracy, plus Al Gore. So the emails on internet 1.0 are just for show.

Personally, I think that the world should help Lamar Smith by sending him copies of all their emails wherein any are contained correspondence with the word 'NASA', or any email containing any of his search terms. Attachments included of course.

I'm sure that he could find what he's looking for in such a helpfull stream, and he might even be shocked by the other conspiracies that turn up in his forensic examination.

From Lamer(sic) Smith's hit-piece:The source of this “97 percent” myth is a discredited study that attempted to categorize scholarly articles on climate change by the position the papers took on the issue. But most of the papers never took a position on climate change at all.

This is a classic DDTP (Dishonest Denier Talking-Point).

You can cook up a variation of this talking-point for *any* scientific subject.

For example, consider peer-reviewed papers published in epidemiology journals. How many of them explicitly take a position on the "germ theory of disease"? Virtually none will. But does that mean that the "germ theory of disease" is controversial in the scientific community? Of course not! It means that the "germ theory of disease" has been so thoroughly accepted for so many years that there's no longer any reason to bring it up.

And as far as the peer-reviewed climate-science literature is concerned, the same holds true for AGW.

I believe the "theory of the atom" analogy was part of the opinion from the judge in the court case that smacked down Virginia attorney general Ken Cucinelli's fishing expedition against Michael Mann a few years ago. -- Dennis

Atoms:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/27/science/earth/epa-emissions-rules-backed-by-court.html"The judges unanimously dismissed arguments from industry that the science of global warming was not well supported and that the agency had based its judgment on unreliable studies. “This is how science works,” they wrote. “The E.P.A. is not required to reprove the existence of the atom every time it approaches a scientific question.”

If I were the head of NOAA and an a$$, I would have sticked to the letter of ... the letter, and noticed that Rep. Lamar asked a search for the terms Karl (...) AND CEQ ; therefore, as an honest scientist always willing to get as close to the exact request as possible I would have interpreted this "and" as a mathematical "and". Far less work for Rep. Lamar ...

Then again, I would maybe have been a GIGANTIC a$$, noticed that NO temporal limitation was indicated. As a serious and responsible administrator, I would have of course then complied with the investigation. Printing everything - initial mails, replies, automated replies, all with the COMPLETE header. in 6 pts. Recto verso. And shipped everything in front of Lamar's office door while he's inside. Bill including printing,ink costs, printer wearing and shipping expenses would of course have been sent separately at the Congress accounting office ...

"An example of how this administration promotes its suspect climate agenda can be seen at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Its employees altered historical climate data to get politically correct results in an attempt to disprove the eighteen year lack of global temperature increases.

NOAA conveniently issued its news release that promotes this report just as the administration announced its extensive climate change regulations.

NOAA has refused to explain its findings and provide documents to this Committee and the American people. The people have a right to see the data, evaluate it, and know the motivations behind this study.

Last week, over 300 respected scientists and experts – which include a Nobel Prize winner, members of the National Academy of Sciences, and former astronauts – sent the Committee a letter that expressed concern over NOAA's efforts to alter historicaltemperature data. They agree that the issue deserves serious scrutiny.

This administration continually impedes Congressional oversight of its extreme climate agenda. Rightfully, Americans should be suspicious."

Seriously, you can't make this stuff up!http://docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY00/20160202/104399/HHRG-114-SY00-20160202-SD004.pdfhttp://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=104399

Indeed they are! And they've chosen as an alternative.. money and corruption! And lunacy, of course.

And the whole world will be backing the rational establishment over Trump's bizarre oompah-loompah fascism. The GOP's current election cycle is proof of Marx's dictum that history repeats, first as tragedy, then as farce...

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All you need to know about WUWT

WUWT insider Willis Eschenbach tells you all you need to know about Anthony Watts and his blog, WattsUpWithThat (WUWT). As part of his scathing commentary, Wondering Willis accuses Anthony Watts of being clueless about the blog articles he posts. To paraphrase:

Even if Anthony had a year to analyze and dissect each piece...(he couldn't tell if it would)... stand the harsh light of public exposure.

Definition of Denier (Oxford): A person who denies something, especially someone who refuses to admit the truth of a concept or proposition that is supported by the majority of scientific or historical evidence.
‘a prominent denier of global warming’
‘a climate change denier’

Alternative definition: A former French coin, equal to one twelfth of a Sou, which was withdrawn in the 19th century. Oxford. (The denier has since resurfaced with reduced value.)